Three years ago, the Bodleian Libraries, the Library of Trinity College Dublin, and the British Library started planning a collaborative web archive collection. Looking at the 100th anniversary of the Easter Rising in 2016, the idea was to identify, collect, and archive, websites that can contribute to an understanding of the causes, course, and consequences of the pivotal event in modern Irish history. The Easter Rising 1916 Web Archive, as the project was called, aimed to reflect the diverse ways in which the Irish and British states, cultural and educational institutions, as well as communities and individuals engaged with the Easter Rising and its legacy in the centenary year. This meant that we set out to include a wide range of online material, such as official commemorative websites, the websites of museums, archives and heritage institutions, traditional and alternative news media websites, community websites, blogs, social media and even online shops.

The Easter Rising Web Archive featured in exhibitions and events at the Library of Trinity College Dublin and at the Bodleian Libraries

Starting in summer 2015, project curators in Dublin and in Oxford collected websites from the Irish and from the UK web domains, and from the domains of countries where the Irish diaspora have a strong presence, predominantly the USA. Our colleagues at the British Library provided the technical and curatorial infrastructure. By December 2016, the end of the collection period, the Easter Rising Web Archive had grown to more than 300 ‘seeds’ – comprising websites, individual online items such as news articles or event pages, or social media feeds.